Week 8, complete

I was debating on not writing a post this week, because I am too busy. But, I don't think I have missed a week since I have gotten into writing this. I can't break the habit now. Especially when I am so close to compiling my process journal. I am sure I can use all the brain dump I can get.

Book:
I met with my old advisor, Matt, this week. As usual, he got into my head and said the few things I needed to hear to provide me with clarity. Everything he said made sense and my only regret is that I didn't meet with him sooner. I am now back to binding method #1, but with a few minor changes. I plan to make a new mock up at full size this week, then re-size the book again, and roll with it. Way too much to do, but at least I have a clear direction and I can move ahead.

Website:
I began the week by trying to teach myself code. I think I understand it now and feel comfortable writing some basic stuff. Now, I just need to get building everything, and find the questions I know I have.

Life:
I am less grumpy this week. Our landlord got us a new fridge, and I went overboard at the grocery store the other night. I think just having food to pick at and keep me full, is all I need to get through the rest of the semester.

Food:
I discovered pumpkin flavored cream cheese this week. o.m.g.





I got all of the pages to the website mocked up. The image looks huge because this is just the screen shot of the full area, most of this will be hidden by a normal sized browser. I just didn't have time to take new screen shots of the pages.

Home

Harvest

 

Connect

Food delivery

Pod renting

Seed magazine

Gallery of images

Week 7, re-cap

This week felt like a month. Too much happened, and I did too much work. Not just with thesis, but with my other class, and with my job. I'm exhausted, felling shitty, and in need of a week off. Not happening.

I tried to sign up for my last class, and like always, it was not so cut and dry. I was offered a chance to present my final this semester, and if I passed, be waved from the last class. The news was awesome at the time and I was going to go for it....and then they sent me the final checklist. Not happening. The positive part of this, is now I have the checklist and I can plan my time to fit it all in.

Clearly stressed, not a positive post. Well, it's going into week 8, I may as well get used to this for the next couple months.

Website
I made good progress this week, although it does not really look like it. I had a lot of details to work out and sections to add. Now it is ready to code! I'm going to mess around with some fake stuff this week, and hopefully get comfortable working with code.


Book
I made my second book mock up this week and I really like it. The mock up itself is a disaster, it is hacked together with random materials I had laying around. But, the point is to test the method and see it physically. I decided to change my book size to work with the paper size I can buy. It helps to keep the book costs to around $300, rather than $600. This is why I am broke. But, the binding is really nice, easy to do and works with my sections well. I spent a lot of time re-sizing the book and mocking up more pages. I'm about 1/2 done and presenting it to my old advisor, Matt, on Friday. We will rip it apart and make it better. It is just so-so now.


Life
This past week begins the fun part of the semester where I don't sleep well, don't eat, and am so tired that I make mistakes at work, and begin dreaming of dropping out. Since I am so close to finishing, my dreaming is more about graduating rather than dropping out, so that is good.


Food
Not really eating. One part I have no time, one part our fridge is 20˚, so all our food freezes. Maybe when we get a new one this week, we will have food in it. Then I will beg the husband to cook for me. I did have one great meal this week. We went to dinner to this small Italian place, for my father-in-laws birthday. The owner was an off-the-boat Italian, and pretty funny. He made a point to talk to everyone and made you feel at home. The food was great! My favorite part of the night was when he chased us out of the restaurant when we left, because we didn't give him a hug goodbye. HA!


Finally some visuals! Not all of the sub home pages are complete, but here are a few pages of my website. No book stuff yet, it is not good enough to show. It better be soon though, I'm running out of time.


 

HomePage

Harvest main page

Connect main page

What week is this?

...oh ya, end of week 6. I don't know what to write about this week. There must be someone else in my head, if I am at a loss for words.

Let's see... I had a busy, but good, week. I officially applied for graduation and the feeling that came over me was sort of unexpected. We have to apply early, and I never knew why. But, it was my time to apply, so I went in to my online profile and went through the steps. When the screen popped up that it was submitted, I was stuck in a daze. A good daze. The type where your head gets all light and cloudy, like you just fell in love. I'm a dork. Then I found out why we need to apply so early. (feeling subsides) We need to have our version 1 portfolio designed and approved before we can can take our final class, which is portfolio. So we design a portfolio, to get approved to design a portfolio. HA. The good news, is at least I know my work is good to go BEFORE I do the super sexy portfolio and attempt to pass. Aside from all of that, I sat at my computer for so long my leg fell asleep for pretty much the whole week. My poor body. Saturday I was looking for any excuse to procrastinate and found a great way. On our way home from laundry we walked by the Southie "antique shop" and they actually had an antique! It was this insanely beautiful 1800s dry sink, that we got for way less than we should have. I took it home, vacuumed the spiders out, wiped it down and then took pictures of it. It smells like old wood, but I lit incense in it and closed the doors. Now it smells like an old hippy. :)

OK, enough rambling. (Guess I did have a lot to write)

Website
I made some good progress this week, even though I only got through about 1/2 of what I thought I could. Building these pages is so time consuming, but now that it is getting tightened up, it is really rewarding. Tons more to do, but looks like we will start coding next week. EEK!

Book
Of course, I get working on the book again and make more work for myself. I worked on it till the later hours in the night, then spend the night dreaming about it. Which ends up in the usual "I can't wait to get out of bed and work out my ideas, which means I'm not sleeping" situation. My new ideas involve re-doing my whole binding method, and re-working my structure. Dammit! The plus side is the binding is going to be so much better, because I am working in signatures, and each section of the book will be its own signature. So this creates a really nice system for organizing the information in the book. I blame this all on Pinterest... a website full of endless kinds of inspiration which makes my mind wander.

Still not ready to show my work yet, so here is my pretty dry sink for this weeks visual. I decorated it with some other old pieces we have. billow camera, A Midsummer Night book, and the pictures of my grandparents when they were 18. I really went all out with procrastination.

Week 5 re-cap

Another week has flown by. At this point, I'm getting a bit spooked (see what I did there, it's October) at how fast this semester is going. I'm mostly still on track, but when the weeks fly by like this, I usually find myself at week 12, totally overwhelmed. The good part, is it is going by fast because I am having a good time. Last weekend was the last one filled with plans, and it was 80˚ out! I was so happy to be out doing things rather than stuck behind a computer. But it is time for my fun weekends to be put on hold for a while. Oh well, at this rate it will be May before I know it.

Website
I really have no idea what I am doing, even with the design. I messed around with the main parts of the homepage for far too long, and now I am about a half week behind. Not a huge deal, but I gave myself a kick in the ass last night to keep me on track. No more messing around and trying things out. I like where I am with the basic structure and now I'm just going to pimp it out. Busy week ahead.

Book
I say this with my head low and, if I had one, my tail between my legs..... I did not touch my book this week. I was so excited that I was ahead of schedule and instead of moving ahead like I was, I put it aside in favor of a day trip to Salem. I'm bad. As much as I should, I really have no regrets like I normally do when I take time for myself. I usually feel guilty any second I am away from the computer.... not this semester. :) I have tomorrow off of work for my October "day off a month" day, so I plan to work all day on my book. My plan is for the whole thing to be mocked up on the computer and ready to nit pick, by the end of this week.

Life
Guess I already covered this. It has been fun lately! I am mostly stress free, super happy, and loving every second I am out and about. When I actually do get to bed, I am sleeping great. But, I have been getting to bed later and getting up earlier to make up the time. Oh well.

Food
I ate too much cheese this week.


Still not ready to show what I have been working on. It is not good enough yet. So here are some more process images to keep the post pretty.

Photo shoot day

Photo shoot day

Painting the picnic tables

Pile # 1 waiting to be photographed

Photo shoot day at my in-laws

Pretty proud of my shirts, even though they are boring

This was what my apartment looked like for most of the summer

My work station at my office. I make a mess everywhere.

Week 4: re-cap

This was one of those weeks that it was all of a sudden Friday, and I feel like the week just started. Laundry was over-due, I had a couple late nights with work, and had my first "day off a month" day. I'm happy I was a bit ahead these past few weeks, because I slacked this week. Luckily, I had jury duty yesterday and got cut a little after mid-day, so I was able to get a head start on my work for my other class. It is called professional practices and we are working on our personal identity, which I will use when I develop my portfolio in the spring. We need to produce a business system this week and I can't do that without a logo. I bused out some good logo sketches last night and I will need to mock them up and create the collateral all this week. EEK! Lot's to do on top of thesis, but my personal identity is going to be awesome. I'm so excited to get it all done.

Book
I slacked on the book this week. I don't have an advisor for the book to report to, so I decided to put it aside for a few days. Next thing I knew I was running out of time and needed the time for the website work. I was able to mock up a bunch of pages with images and the header type, but I did not get as much done as I wanted. This week will be a bit of a challenge. I hope to have the whole thing mocked up by week 6. Do-able, but not easy.

Website
I was not 100% happy with where my mock ups were last week, but I felt it was because they needed to be refined. So the first thing I did this week was refine my homepage and work out some details. After I got it cleaned up, I was still not sure it was good enough. So, I went back and worked on a few different home page variations that are slightly different than what I originally had. Now I have two more that I like better than the first. I'm happy to have something better looking, but I was hoping to have this nailed down so I can move on to the rest of the pages. I did get most of the type typed out, so it is ready to put in the pages without having to use placement type. Yay!

Life
Last week was pretty good because I was all over the place. I liked the variety of my week, but it totally kicked my ass. I took Tuesday off as my first "day off of everything day" and because I was out of work for the day I needed to work late on Monday. Which also means up late doing homework. Then Thursday I worked out in the market seeing design opportunities in different liquor stores, so Wednesday I had to work late to make up for that. Thursday I got home late, stayed up late doing homework and Friday I just wanted to crash. BUT, I forced myself to get some work done. I wish I was one of those people that could function on 7 hours a night. My sleep is high maintenance, so when I lose a little, it throws me off. Can't complain though. The week was hectic, but pretty awesome!

Food
Last night I made a new meal and it came out awesome. I like to find recipes and then change it all around to make it the way I think is better. I made this casserole thing that has thin sliced potatoes. sweet potatoes, layered with a mixture of leeks, artichokes, seasonings. lemon, celery and this soft cheese. I topped it with bread crumbs and baked it! I put a little too much pepper on some parts and it was a bit spicy, but overall it was great. Meals like this make me excited to go to work the next day, so that I can have it for lunch.

Still not much to show for visuals. So here is a sample of what it looks like to make your own typeface. I hand-made each letter and then thinned it down for the "light" version. To make all of the type I have to go in and copy each letter to make the words. Below is my type palette, and also the page of all the words I have used so far. Kinda time consuming, but City Farm has it's own unique typeface so its worth it. :)